At this point I'm sure most everyone is aware of the recent Newsweek poll that provided good news for Democrats, but was painted by the right-wingers and the narrative pushing media as an outlier.
To refresh your memory the poll was conducted on 10/21-10/22 and said:
Generic House Poll
Likely Voters
Dem - 48%
GOP - 45%
Registered Voters
Dem - 48%
GOP - 42%
Presidential Approval
Approve - 54%
Disapprove - 40%
Now that your memory is refreshed I wanted to bring up something about this poll that sets it apart from almost all the other polling being done during this election season.
First, we all know about the theory that an under-sampling of cell phone only voters is skewing poll results in favor of the Republicans. We've even had a report from Pew Research that said an under-sampling of cell phones can skew poll results in favor of Republicans anywhere from 2-7 points, depending on the survey question.
What is not widely known is that the number of Americans who only have a cell phone and no land line has doubled in just the last 3 years. Even more among some demographics. (more on that later)
The question most people will ask is why the hell don't the pollsters just get with the program and start including cell phone only households in their polls. Well, because it's expensive as hell. As a matter of fact, making just 30% of your total sample cell phones can triple the overall cost of your poll!
This is what makes the results of that Newsweek poll so interesting.
The Newsweek poll included cell phones, and a lot of them. Out of the 1,005 adults polled, 333 were via cell phones. Which is very close to the number of households that are estimated to be cell phone only.
Does this mean the Newsweek poll is an indication of the true state of the electorate? Is it more evidence that the media narrative is based on polls that are ignoring traditional Democratic voter groups? Well here's one more bit of food for thought. From a survey on cell phone usage done in 2007 by the government:
-- 29.1 percent of people ages 25 to 29 and 25.2 percent of the people ages 18 to 24 have abandoned residential phones and rely solely on cell phones.
-- Among poor households, more than 1 in 5 (22.4 percent) have dropped landlines, about twice the rate of other respondents.
-- Latinos at 15.3 percent were the most likely of ethnic groups to sever their landline and rely on cell phones exclusively,
-- Renters (26.4 percent) were more likely than homeowners (5.8 percent) to use wireless.
What does this mean? GOTV, GOTV, GOTV! The media and Tea Party is hoping we consider the election lost and stay home. We need to stay focused. Just imagine how sweet it would be to see Nancy Pelosi swearing in the 112th congress, AGAIN as Speaker of The House.
GOTV.